Jay jumped down the last set of stairs, agony shooting up through his leg. He had rolled his ankle but pushed through the hot pain. He leapt onto the Zodiac, slipped out his knife, and cut the ties mooring the craft to the oil platform. He yanked on the cord to start the Zodiac’s off-board motor. The low gurgle of burning fuel sounded—beautiful music to his ears.
A piercing cry caught his ears, and he glanced up to see the silhouettes of creatures tumbling down the stairs of the platform, still on his trail. Lightning flashed above, illuminating the frenzied beasts as they ran and pushed each other toward their fleeing prey. They wouldn’t give up even though he was already in his boat and seconds from escape. He turned the boat against the storm tides that were curling around the gigantic posts of the oil platform. Desperate, the creatures began to leap. Their bodies splashed into the dark water around him. Most flailed wildly or sank as black waves swallowed them whole.
Then one falling creature cut through the air toward him. He caught its eyes on its descent just before the beast crashed into the side of the Zodiac, scrambling for purchase as the tide sucked it overboard. Another wave washed over them.
For a moment, it appeared as though the beast would be pulled into the storm currents, yanked from the small craft. But luck was not so kind.
The creature’s bone-plated limbs pushed its body upwards, out from the unforgiving Atlantic, and it rolled onto the bow of the Zodiac. Its red eyes met Jay’s once more. There was no humanity there, no mercy.
He tightened his grip around the knife in his hand, the blade glinting in the burst of white electricity coursing through the sky. Images of his home, his friends and parents back in Washington, DC, flashed across his mind. He prayed Meredith Webb would keep her word that someone in his family got the money he earned through his sacrifice.
The beast howled. Its skeletal fingers clicked against each other. It leapt toward him, and he jumped to meet the creature, blade flashing before him.
-6-
Meredith watched the video feed of her apartment hall. Two agents were approaching her door. She had prepared for this moment, but she hadn’t expected it so soon. It had been mere days since she’d uncovered the cryptic memo regarding the IBSL oil platform. Lawson must have found out that she’d already sent a team to explore the laboratory and she’d continued her investigations after he’d told her to drop the subject. He was undoubtedly making good on his threats, and she might soon feel the full wrath of the agency when he used his power within the organization to bring her down.
One woman against the CIA. She didn’t stand a chance. The best she could hope for was eluding them long enough for Dom and his crew to find out what happened to Jay Perry’s team and, more importantly, what the hell was going on at the IBSL facility.
She hoisted her rucksack onto the card table. The pack was already half loaded with the gear she’d need to survive on her own. She stuffed the encrypted radio unit and a satellite phone into the side. Once she was far enough from this compromised safe house, she would reestablish communications with Dom.
Meredith could hear the men’s footsteps outside her door now. The mics she’d planted outside let her eavesdrop somewhat on their muffled words. It sounded as if they were conferring about breaking down the door or having agents sweep in from the balcony, she thought, given the few words she could make out.
She focused on the task at hand. The card table still held a couple computers and a radio set up for encrypted communication. Meredith couldn’t take all the equipment with her. Instead, she set a small timed explosive and placed it between the devices. She’d wiped the devices clean, but she was no computer wizard. While the agency might have some idea of what she’d uncovered on the IBSL facility, they knew virtually nothing about Dom and his covert operators. She intended to keep it that way.
The timer ticked away. Thirty seconds to go.
She needed to make a break for it, and the front door obviously wouldn’t do. Agents would be waiting outside her windows and below her fourth-floor balcony, too. Undoubtedly spooks were positioned near her car. In her twenty years with the CIA, she’d learned the importance of a contingency plan. She cracked open the door to the utility closet and slipped inside. She removed a tile in the ceiling, threw her rucksack up into the cobweb-filled space, and hoisted herself up. After replacing the tile, she scuttled over the support beams and crawled under ductwork and water pipes away from her apartment.
A muffled explosion shook the thick dust from the woodwork. Her small bomb had detonated, destroying the computers and electronics she’d left behind.
She continued her trek until she reached another tile marked with a black X formed by electrical tape. The tile slid out of place with a gentle nudge and revealed a stairwell below. On the landing near a steel door, an agent paced with two fingers pressed to his earpiece and his back to her.
In one fell swoop, she twisted out of the opening and swung down behind the agent. Her arm whipped around his neck, and she put him in a chokehold before he could so much as yell into his throat mic. His fingers shot up and around her wrist, and he squirmed. When he slammed his heel into her foot, she winced and bit on her bottom lip. She pulled her arm tighter around his neck and crushed his windpipe until he passed out.
She gently lowered his body against the landing and felt his neck for a pulse. The agent was unconscious but alive. She quickly snatched the comm piece from his ear. Then she searched his suit jacket and felt for the cold steel of his holstered gun. A quick pat down revealed a suppressor tucked into a concealed pocket within the jacket. She screwed the suppressor onto the handgun.
Descending the stairs, she listened for radio chatter.
A voice crackled through her earpiece. “Echo One here. No sign in the apartment.” He seemed out of breath. “Just some burned-out equipment. Anyone else got eyes?”
Two other winded agents responded in turn. “Negative.”
Meredith breathed a sigh of relief. At least the man at her door hadn't reported any injuries or fatalities from her little explosion—she had no intention of killing Agency employees—and they still didn’t know where she’d gone. She dashed down the stairs toward the four-story apartment building’s south exit.
She snatched a pair of night-vision goggles from her pack and snapped them on. She nudged the stairwell exit door open and scanned the alcove beyond. There were no lurking agents in the immediate vicinity, but a hulking dumpster blocked her view of the rest of the parking lot. She tiptoed out and gently shut the door. A cool breeze tussled her hair as she crept forward. She crouched behind the dumpster. A short sprint would lead her straight into the woods, where thick underbrush and columns of sturdy trees could shield her escape north toward the Potomac River.
She surveyed the parking lot to see who might spot her if she ran straight for the trees. A couple of shapes moved beside a line of parked cars near the front of the building. If she kept low, maybe she could avoid being spotted. But the knowledge that these two agents could be avoided did not sit well with her. Trained field agents knew how to set a security perimeter. An agent or two would probably be positioned somewhere else nearby. She just hadn’t found them yet.
A quick flick of a switch on her goggles gave her a thermal view of her surroundings. Her field of vision swam in blues and blacks, interspersed with hot areas of red, yellow, and orange. The augmented view of her environment exposed two more agents, lit up as if they were on fire, hiding in the woods. She could wait for the right moment and sprint to the cars nearest her, which might shield her from their vision. Then she could sneak past them by crawling low and slow through the curling weeds and dense foliage.
Her stolen earpiece crackled to life. “Positions, report.”
Each agent’s voice sounded off in sequence until there was a brief pause.
“Echo Five, come in.”
Silence for a moment.
“Echo Five, come in.”
Meredith pictured the man she’d left unco
nscious in the stairwell, his body slumped against the cinderblock walls.
“All agents, be alert. Echo Five is not reporting. Target may be on the move. Echo Six, Echo Seven, close gap on the north stairwell.”
The two agents near the edge of the woods stood. They started in a prowl and headed her direction.
So much for taking it slow.
Would Dom act on the short message she’d barely had time to send? If she failed now and was caught, the fate of whatever that oil platform-turned bioweapons facility harbored lay completely in his hands.
***
Tucked in the belly of the Huntress, the cavernous loading bay buzzed with the sounds of zippers and tearing duct tape as the Hunters donned their blue positive-pressure biosafety suits. Despite a history of delving into facilities filled with a host of biological agents and hazardous chemicals, this was the first time Dom had ordered the full contingency of suits for a mission. The Hunters prepared themselves, bantering as usual, almost as if to distract themselves from what lay ahead.
Brett Fielding, a former Ranger and one of the youngest Hunters on Dom’s team, pulled out a small photograph he brought with him on each mission. He kissed it before putting it in his front pocket and pulling up his biohazard suit. Dom had seen the photo plenty of times before—an airbrushed headshot of a blonde with undeniable Scandinavian roots and sharp cheekbones.
“Bro, tell me about that girl of yours again,” Miguel said to Brett.
“She was this tall.” Brett held his hand an inch above his own head. “Gorgeous, smarter than me even.”
“That ain’t exactly hard to do.” Scott grinned as a couple other Hunters laughed.
“Come on, guys.” Jenna patted Brett on his back. “Let the kid have his fantasy.”
Brett scowled. “She was—I mean, is—real, I’m telling you.”
“Christ,” ex-Army Ranger Scott Ashworth said, rolling his eyes. “And she was a Victoria’s Secret model, too, huh?”
Ivan Price, a Marine, elbowed Brett playfully. “Is her secret that she isn’t real?” He looked around the group, but the others gave him sour looks.
“Lame, man,” Terrence Connor, another Ranger, said. “Brett’s imaginary girlfriend could come up with a better one than that.”
“So about that Victoria’s Secret thing,” Jenna started. “Can she get me a discount?”
“Well, I...”
“It’s okay, I’m not into that lacy crap anyway,” Jenna continued, “but was she really one of the Angels walking the runway?”
“She was, honest!” Then Brett turned away as he adjusted his suit’s glove. “But that was after she dumped me.”
“Cold, bro,” Miguel said. “Ice cold.”
Dom stood tall as Lauren zipped up the back of his suit. She laid a strip of tape over the seams where his outermost glove met his suit.
“Good to go.” Lauren patted his back as she finished with the tape. “I’ll have the decontamination chambers set up right here as soon as you’re on your way.”
Dom nodded and scrutinized his squad members, who were busy slipping into their blue suits. They’d all seen the video and had agreed to take part in the mission to gather firsthand intelligence on the facility. He didn’t want to blindly lead the people who trusted him into whatever nightmare lived on the oil platform, but something about Meredith’s warning and the brutality of the video didn’t sit right with him. He counted down the line of Hunters with their rifles strapped across their chests. There were times when he thought of them as a rambunctious lot, such as when they levied their jokes at Brett’s expense. But once they were suited up and ready to go, there was no question as to their professionalism or seriousness.
“Hector, Jenna, Glenn, Scott, and Miguel, you're on me.” The five Hunters positioned themselves by Dom. “Andris, Terrence, Brett, Ivan, and Spencer, follow Renee's lead on team Bravo.”
The remaining Hunters gathered up around Renee. She nodded at Dom, her green eyes serious and focused. The former gymnast and CIA clandestine agent took stock of her team. Leading came naturally to her, and Dom always had enough confidence in her ability to command a squad whenever he had to divide up his Hunters.
“We don’t know what the hell is on that platform, but we don’t want to let it off,” Dom said. “Webb suspects bioweapons, and if what we saw in this video is the result of some kind of biological agent, then we’re about to enter a hot-zone of unparalleled proportions. Questions?”
Glenn Walsh, a former Green Beret, sauntered forward. Even beneath the unflattering bio suit, the man’s muscles pressed against the blue plastic fabric. “Are we to engage all hostiles? Take prisoners? What’s the deal with these things?”
The video raced through Dom’s mind again. “I don’t think these people—these things, whatever they are—will surrender. Eliminate any aggressive threats with extreme prejudice.”
“Why the hell are we going in again? Let’s just blow the place apart,” Scott said. “Boom. Problem solved.”
“No way, bro,” Miguel said with no hint of his usual good humor. “Maybe this isn’t the only place they’re developing this agent. Maybe this weapon is already being deployed. Pretty stupid to destroy the only evidence we have, if you ask me.”
“Exactly,” Dom said. “First and foremost, our mission is to figure out what is or was going on there. Gather up any biological or chemical samples you can and get it all back to Lauren’s team.” He hated bringing back samples of what they found on the drilling platform aboard his ship, but they had no choice. Lauren and her team couldn’t do the science without the samples to test.
“Bring back everything,” Lauren added with deliberate emphasis on the word. “If someone uses the biological or chemical weapon that was developed at the IBSL, it’s crucial we know what the weapon is. We need to know its origins. Depending on what it is, determining its chemical or genetic makeup is crucial. We can only find a way to treat or prevent it if we can characterize it in our lab.”
“Ready?” Dom asked the eleven Hunters before him.
“Aye aye, Captain!” Their voices carried up in unison, and energy coursed among them.
Dom watched Lauren quickly glance at Glenn as the former Green Beret adjusted the strap of his rifle. Her face contorted in a worried expression for only a moment before she turned away. Dom had always suspected the two had once shared something more than friendship, but there wasn’t time to contemplate intra-ship relationships now. He signaled to Alden Jorgenson, one of the ship’s engineers. Alden tapped a touchscreen on a command console built into the bulkhead. The entire bay went dark before being filled with the dim red glow of the battle lights. A starboard-side hatch opened to reveal a black sky above roiling waters. Howling ocean winds pierced the inside of the ship and rattled against Dom’s suit. Alden’s fingers danced across the console again. A hoist and pulley system extended out above the churning ocean.
Two of the Hunters in biosafety suits clipped the first Zodiac to the small crane system.
“All right, we’re going to go six to a Zodiac,” Dom said. “Bravo, load up first.”
He watched the team board the small black craft and then disappear beyond the bulkhead as the Zodiac was lowered toward the ocean. When Alden raised the cables again, Hector and Jenna attached the second Zodiac. Dom boarded with them, joined by Miguel, Scott, and Glenn. He shot a hand signal to Alden, and they swung out over the rough Atlantic. The first Zodiac had already cleared the Huntress and drifted a couple dozen yards away.
The pulleys clinked as the cable was fed through them, and Dom looked back toward the open bay door. Illuminated by the dull crimson interior lights of the ship, Lauren leaned out. Her dark hair whipped about her face. The worried expression she wore turned to a weak smile when she caught his gaze.
The Zodiac hit the ocean’s surface, and a wave rolled over them. Hector and Jenna released the clasps holding the Zodiac to the cables. Given his experience as a former Navy SEAL, Hector took his spot as c
oxswain and adjusted the tiller on the craft. He directed the boat toward the first squad in open water.
A burst of distant lightning sliced the dark clouds rolling through the sky, and heavy rain started to pound against Dom’s suit. It reminded Dom of an old joke among SCUBA Divers: Don’t go diving when it’s raining. You’ll get wet. But he hardly felt like laughing. Another wave rocked the small craft, and Dom tightened his grip on the rubber gunwale. He didn’t want anybody, wet or not, ending up in the stormy ocean tonight.
The outboard motor’s low chugging intensified. They shot out westward into the night, toward the unknown against an enemy they’d seen only once in a grainy video feed. Already, the storm brewing above them threatened to upend their efforts and send them all into the sea. Just one of the many pleasures of hurricane season in the Atlantic.
Any other mission, Dom would’ve waited for better weather, a clearer night. But the nightmarish bioengineered weapons on the IBSL wouldn’t wait. They must be eliminated before they unleashed their horrors on the world.
The Zodiac sliced through a capping wave. Again, water rushed over the rubber gunwale. The Hunters faced forward with their eyes trained on the distant, almost invisible horizon. Dom knew what was on their minds. They usually functioned on thorough intel provided by one of the world’s most prominent intelligence agencies. Tonight, they ventured toward a target they knew almost as much about as they did the deepest depths of the ocean.
Dom gripped the SCAR-H hanging across his chest. Another distant arc of lightning silhouetted the oil platform beginning to loom before them. Adrenaline pumped through his vessels as he imagined what terrors lay in wait for them on that rig.
-7-
The derrick in the center of the platform shone like a skeletal finger thrusting into the sky. A framework of steel beams and rails lay across the deck.
The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) Page 5